Back in 1998, Damon & Naomi sang, “It’s the turn of the century / which way you going to go?” In the 21st Century documents the direction they chose, drawing on their four albums recorded for 20/20/20, 2005-2015. Michio Kurihara, electric guitarist extraordinaire known for his work with Tokyo bands Ghost and Boris, features prominently on nearly all these tracks, as does avant-garde soprano saxophonist and arranger Bhob Rainey. Damon & Naomi’s 21st century songs may be a bit more musically complex than their albums made for Sub Pop in the 1990s, or their recordings with Galaxie 500 in the 1980s, but as journalists (and twin sisters) Jenn and Liz Pelly point out in collaborative liner notes that accompany this release, there are strong continuities with the mood of those earlier albums. “In their acoustic dream pop, inspired by poised English folk, I hear composure and also intensity; delicacy and also rigor; a hushed quality as well as strength, which is to say stoicism. I hear grace and what makes grace so emotionally necessary. Theirs are magic-hour songs, pushing the dualities of our emotional lives into stark relief,” says Jenn. “It’s music that makes time stop, or stretch, or slow down. Songs where the ticking clock is not met with pure anxiety,” adds Liz. “There’s also a sense of mystery in some of these songs that seems to allow for the unpacking of interior life with a respectful distance, which I admire.” “Really I feel like there is a whole...
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02/14/2019
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02/14/2019
“Grey day celebration music for meshed afternoons; eleven strums and songs to savor as you wander till spring. Did Damon & Naomi dream them? Did I? Will you?” —Andy Zax People talk about Damon & Naomi as if they’re the raw infrastructure that remained after Galaxie 500 fell apart, a steel skeleton stubbornly standing after an earthquake. But when the pair began a new project, they weren’t adjusting so much as starting from scratch. By the time they released More Sad Hits, they had grown enough as musicians and songwriters that they didn’t need to lean on stark sincerity and reverb-drenched emoting. Instead, they reigned in their sound, favoring acoustic over electric, building more complex and specific textures, and exploring smaller sonic spaces. If Galaxie 500 was ahead of its time, Damon & Naomi are prescient in their own way, firmly rooted in the early ’90s but hinting at things to come. The project provided a necessary platform for the pair to focus, hone and build on the groundwork that they laid for themselves, peeling away layers to reveal a shy closeness that Galaxie 500 never could. The pair’s latest project, Fortune, is an LP released in tandem with Naomi Yang’s video piece of the same name. She refers to the work as “a silent movie,” though the visuals are so bound up in the music (and vice versa) that it’s more of a long-form music video, a visual poem set to the metronome of a textural score. She conceived...
LP $16.00
03/17/2015
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02/17/2015
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02/06/2015
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02/06/2015
In 1995, Damon & Naomi went into the studio with Galaxie 500 producer Kramer to record their debut for Sub Pop. Not everything went according to plan, however; or rather, it turned out Kramer and Damon & Naomi each had a different plan for what should result. Damon & Naomi put down tracks for what they thought would be their first “acoustic” album, the beginnings of the folky sound they would develop in years to come. But Kramer, in the engineer and producer’s seat, finished it according to his own idea: closer in spirit to the psychedelic record the duo and he had previously recorded together, More Sad Hits. When Damon & Naomi asked for changes, the mercurial Kramer—Phil Spector of indie rock—flew into one of his famous rages, insisting the album was already as it should be. In the end, he made the changes, but only under protest. And when band and label asked to hear the original version again to compare, Kramer said too late: he’d erased the tape. Flash forward a number—OK, a lot—of years. Old arguments are forgotten or forgiven, and fortunately no one has been murdered (this is still indie rock, after all). Damon & Naomi receive a message out of the blue from Kramer: a friend of his has found a bunch of master tapes from the old studio, some might be yours, here’s the address. Damon climbs the stairs of a Tribeca walk-up, where a dusty plastic bag sealed with duct tape is waiting...
LP $16.00
04/30/2013
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04/20/2013
In 2011, Damon & Naomi celebrate their 25th year as performers together, and nothing displays that celebratory spirit more than False Beats and True Hearts, their first album of new recordings in four years. An record of lush possibility and depth, False Beats and True Hearts fuses the skill of music veterans with the fervor of artists continuing to create at the top of their craft. With the reissue of the first Damon & Naomi record (More Sad Hits), a retrospective of their mid-career highlights (The Sub Pop Years), and, perhaps most notably, rereleases of all three seminal Galaxie 500 albums, there’s been a lot of looking back. It’s therefore appropriate that the first song off False Beats and True Hearts is “Walking Backwards,” an ode to the joy of nostalgia and warmth of reflection. The song, and indeed, much of the album, is cross-stitched by Michio Kurihara’s elegant guitar playing—a thick and resonating psych sound that has been a part of Damon & Naomi’s music since their collaboration with the Japanese band Ghost. The album is unexpectedly upbeat and strident; while lyrics portray true introspection, the melodies are ambitious and far-reaching. Naomi’s new passion for piano playing circles the album like a starry night, capturing the vitality found in the finest Plastic Ono Band recordings. Like their best material, it’s the sincerity and necessity of their expression that is the most striking. With False Beats and True Hearts, Damon & Naomi offer an essential document of what brings listeners to music in the first place: emotion,...
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05/17/2011
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05/17/2011
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05/17/2011
Compiling the best of Damon & Naomi's records over the course of four albums on the venerable Sub Pop label, The Sub Pop Years commemorates a grand chapter in the career of a band who never planned an existence in the first place. After More Sad Hits (just reissued last year on 20/20/20), the duo was ready to call it a day and concentrate on their book company. However, they were convinced to continue onward by Sub Pop poobah Jonathan Poneman, who saw great potential in their continued collaboration. It was not the first time (nor last) his hunch proved right. For the next ten years, Damon & Naomi developed from a simple recording project to a fully fleshed-out band, with a knack for articulating sounds and accumulating collaborators that continues today. Every early Damon & Naomi release was an event by virtue of its very existence, and Wondrous World of Damon & Naomi was no exception. It was not the final signature to an abridged letter, like More Sad Hits was, but rather marked new forays down future pathways. An eagerness to experiment with folk music formats from around the world, combined with the developing abilities of two true artists, plays out on this compilation, displaying the duo's growing sound. Each album is indeed a leap, the most notable being With Ghost, where a friendship with the Japanese psych band Ghost led to one of the great cross-cultural collaborations in the history of independent music. For a couple of musicians...
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09/08/2009
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09/08/2009
Damon & Naomi have always been a bit more ahead of the curve than is good for them. Galaxie 500 ended before slowcore was a thing. Their psychedelic duo albums with Kramer came out while the Elephant 6 collective were still in high school. They toured the country with an acoustic guitar and Indian harmonium years before there was a New Weird America to receive them. And they made their lushest, most analog album before the vinyl revival. 2007’s Within These Walls came out on CD only, and is only now ten years later being released for the first time on vinyl — the way the duo intended it to be heard. Conceived as a DIY tribute to the great “mood” albums of Sinatra’s Capitol years, the album was recorded with real strings, real horns, real drums, and a very very real electric guitarist named Michio Kurihara. It’s a chamber record with ebow and wah-wah, featuring some of the most emotional songs of the duo’s career. “Lilac Land” opens the album in a somber mood, which never lets go. The string section — Helena Espvall, Margaret Wienk, and Katt Hernandez — underscore Naomi’s dark lyrics and melodies. The horns — Bhob Rainey, Greg Kelley, and Kyle Bruckmann — answer with wit and even a bit of joy, but they’ll never win the arguments here. This album was meant to cast a mood from start to finish, like Sinatra’s classic In The Wee Small Hours, or No One Cares. The album...
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04/21/2017
CD $12.00
09/25/2007
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09/25/2007
***A year in the making, The Earth Is Blue is Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang's most intimate and accomplished record to date. Delicate harmonies and intricate melodic lines dominate the album's ten tracks, all of which were recorded in the duo's home studio. Michio Kurihara flew in from Japan, where he provides the guitar playing for the genius psych-folk of Ghost, and added another layer of inspiration to the songs. Also contributing are trumpeter Greg Kelley and soprano saxophonist Bhob Rainey of Boston's nmperign. Along with eight original songs, the group beautifully interprets "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" by George Harrison and "Araca Azul" by Caetano Veloso. The Earth Is Blue marks the first release on Damon & Naomi's record label, 20/20/20. After almost a decade with Sub Pop, the band decided to oversee the production and distribution of their new release. The Earth Is Blue is a song of hope, and its thoughtful charm will be a strong sedative toward worries beyond control. In the five years since Damon & Naomi released With Ghost (Sub Pop), the duo have released the live Song To The Siren CD/DVD, which documented trips through the US, UK, Europe, Brazil, Japan and Taiwan supporting With Ghost. They run Exact Change, an independent publishing company dedicated to re-releasing innovative surrealist literature of the 20th Century. Damon just released The Memory Theater Burned (Turtle Point Press), a dynamic and cerebral book of poetry. In addition, the band oversaw the recent releases of a...
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02/22/2005
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02/22/2005
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02/22/2005
Live show recorded in 2001 as a trio with Michio Kurihara on electric guitar. Originally released by Sub Pop on CD."Each song is varnished with the glistening warmth that is often felt during a particularly special live performance, making Song to the Siren pleasingly distinct from Damon & Naomi's studio recordings." — The Wire
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04/23/2002
A meeting of Damon & Naomi's spare and emotional songwriting with the Japanese band Ghost's densely psychedelic arrangements. Recorded in the last days of 1999 and the first of 2000."By turns breathtakingly radiant and heartbreakingly melancholy, Damon and Naomi With Ghost finds these kindred spirits joining forces to make the most transcendent music of their respective careers." -- All Music Guide"This slow, hazy, head-in-the-clouds music has a way of leaving sonic cobwebs long after it's over, the melodies lingering like distant memories."-- The Onion
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09/05/2000
The Wondrous World of Damon & Naomi was recorded in the summer of 1995, and released that fall by Sub Pop. Like Damon & Naomi’s first "solo" album, More Sad Hits, it was produced by Kramer at Noise New Jersey.
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11/07/1999
Created as a swan song response to the dissolution of Galaxie 500, More Sad Hits was recorded with Galaxie producer Mark Kramer, and is just as cutting a reaction to the sinister allure of fame as it was when released back in 1992. The album was so strong, that a presumed one-off led to a long relationship with Sub Pop Records, who offered to put out future releases after hearing what the duo could accomplish on their own.Damon & Naomi originally released More Sad Hits on Shimmy Disc one year after the breakup of Galaxie 500, when Dean Wareham left the group to pursue a career with Luna on Elektra Records. With no intention of doing any more recording, the duo were nonetheless convinced to go into the studio after Kramer told them he'd assist with both recording and release.While Damon & Naomi have remained publicly silent regarding Wareham's recent autobiography, this album serves as all the answers anyone needs concerning their side of the drama. And with a shimmering and lonely beauty as only they can achieve, the two made a series of songs as emotionally stark as you're likely to hear. It was recently voted one of the "Top Twenty Most Overlooked Psychedelic Albums" along with Skip Spence and 13th Floor Elevators. This remastered reissue will contain new liner notes and photos.In advance of the release, Damon & Naomi will be touring the states for a serious of special shows with Masaki...
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05/06/1999
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05/06/1999
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05/06/1999
Damon & Naomi produced their third album in 1998, alone in their home studio — a personal, almost private recording, emotional and spare."Playback Singers comes from the soft side of the Velvet Underground, from the hushed folk of the late Nick Drake. Soft, sad, gently stirring." — Boston Globe
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04/07/1999